Is it 2009, or 1919?

I guess the Prius gives it away. ;-) Taken with a roughly 90 year old Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak folder camera.

Tons of lens flare... lousy contrast and sharpness... I think we have to recall that this might have been the smallest pocketable camera available on the market when it was released. Kodak even debuted the (now defunct) 127 Film format just for it!

The more I look at this image, the more I like it. I guess you might even call it "craptacular"... so bad, it's good. :-) Honestly, this would be a very boring composition in a clinically perfect-looking DSLR shot.

Here's the ancient camera that took it, and the experience taking a photograph with it is blogged here...

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Comments

Mario Groleau (prés.CLUBPM) says:

Bravo!
Hi, Not only lens flare, but possibly pin holes in the bellows corners.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

Contrabass says:

Thanks!

I wouldn't be surprised; just about anything's possible with this antique... The sun is off to the left of the view. I placed the camera in a shadow behind a post, to try to get rid of the worst of the flare, etc, but even so it looks pretty crazy.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

active listener (feel free to click for full view) says:

I just read your blog post about this. Quite a project! Congrats on carrying it through-- and on getting an image out of it, yet!

Does your father still have photos he took with it, back in the day? (Presumably it worked more smoothly then-- and having the intended size film must have helped!) If so, could you scan some for us?

Sometimes at flea markets I see long narrow old prints, and I've always wondered what kind of camera they came from. Maybe one of these....
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

Contrabass says:

Thanks!

He sure does still have them! It wasn't thaaat long ago. ;-) I've seen them before, so I really wasn't expecting too much from this camera in the first place... This camera had its issues even 40-50 years ago. (After all, it was already 40+ years old at that time!)

I know what you're talking about, and old long narrow prints definitely aren't from this camera. I should have described it better in the blog post. With the original 127 film, this shot negatives 4x6cm... that's a 1:1.5 aspect ratio, just like standard 35mm film and on today's DSLRs. Since I loaded narrower 35mm film into this camera, one would expect a narrow negative that's 2.4cm x 6cm... but that's only because I'm doing a hack to even get this to work in the first place.

Mario probably knows better than me, but I suspect those really wiiide old prints often found at flea markets were shot on Large Format film (at least 4"x5", maybe 8"x10") and cropped spectacularly. Note how the prints are usually very, very sharp. That's a big negative talking...
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

active listener (feel free to click for full view) says:

Ah, thanks for clearing that up.

Yes, I have noticed how amazingly sharp those prints tend to be. It makes sense now.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

Contrabass says:

FYI, I re-scanned this image, and posted it here on Flickr...
Posted 8 months ago. ( permalink )

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Taken on February 22, 2009
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Is it 2009, or 1919?

Comments

Mario Groleau (prés.CLUBPM) says:

Contrabass says:

active listener (feel free to click for full view) says:

Contrabass says:

active listener (feel free to click for full view) says:

Contrabass says:

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